Menu

Drops against Oblivion (or looking for the lost Homeland), vol. II

I had the feeling that the series „Drops against oblivion (or looking for a lost homeland)“ was not finished and that I have to, indeed need to, go back. My photo journey started last year when I spent a few days in my hometown Bugojno. Later it continued in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo where I had an exhibition „B is for Body“ dedicated to nudes and was at the same time taking pictures of the town, the people in it and the atmosphere. In the meantime, I moved to Berlin and it happens so often that in mixed international groups people ask you: Where are you from? Sometimes you need to move away to see the whole picture, to see that we are never free from our past and countries we come from. I found out that part of me is still that 9 year old Bosnian refugee girl. In September I traveled from the South to the North of the country (Mostar-Sarajevo-Tuzla-Srebrenica), met people, and not Croats, Bosnian and Serbs, and shot, shot and shot. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that heart-shaped country in the middle of Europe, finished 19 years ago. And it’s not just marks of the war that you can see everywhere, like holes in the walls, it’s about the war that is still happening in the heads of the people. Towns are still divided and people are divided with their national identities. The hate and the un-forgiveness are vital and disabling the country to develop and change, and people to live a normal life again. And if photography is the purest and strongest, definitely the most honest language I speak, I need to use it, I need to dig deeper, to face the pictures that are not always nice and feelings that are not easy at all.